The most popular bicycles for long distance touring

What’s the best bicycle for a long-distance tour? Impossible to say. What I can tell you is which bicycles are the most popular for round the world cycle tours.

Here’s a short list of the most common touring bikes we’ve come across on our world cycle tour. You’ll also find links to reviews of expedition touring bicycles and the low-down on who rides what in the world of long-distance bicycle touring.

Thorn Touring Bikes

If you meet a cycle tourist from the U.K., 90% of the time he or she will be riding a Thorn. These bikes have got a solid track record and Brits swear by them.

Surly Touring Bikes

North American cyclists favor the Surly. One reason is the attractive price tag. For a little over $1,000, you can get outfitted with a basic Surly Long Haul Trucker. A Koga or a Thorn could run you more than twice as much.

Nicolai Bangsgaard cycled more than 62,000 kilometers around the world on a Koga, Mark Beaumont rode a Koga on his world record breaking ride around the world and Grace Johnson and Paul Jeurissen of Bicycling Around the World are riding Kogas as they cycle the world in search of inspiring bicycle touring images.

One Response to The most popular bicycles for long distance touring

If you compare the quality of cars being build around the world, (repair-statistics) you know that you should not buy any car being build by Anglo-Saxon countries. The best cars are still being build by either Japanese or German car manufacturers.
Since Germans only recently started to anufacture good bikes, they took the knw-how from Holland or the Dutch are buying the parts in Germany and Japan/Taiwan.

We made a trip from Holland to Bangkok through Central Asia.
My bike is a IDWorx and my wife was riding a Santos. Both bikes did not have any trouble at all, which you can not foresee. We met French, Canadian, Australian and German bikers along the route. On some of their bikes I would not even bike in Holland, so bad was the quality.
Off course it is also a matter of money, but a good bike is the first thing to buy.